The
Dr. Leonard J. Gordon Park at Jersey City Heights is best known for the sculptures of Buffalo and Bears
(c. 1907) that one sees when passing on Kennedy Boulevard as well as for its nickname "mosquito
park" after the pesky New Jersey insect.

Its
development took place at the time of the "City Beautiful" movement
in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. The movement's
purpose was to revitalize industrialized communities with public spaces
for recreational purposes. The Jersey City Charter Company owned the
undeveloped hillside woodland site with stone boulders and sold it to
Jersey City for $46,000 on September 19, 1907.

The
5.7 acre park was designed by the landscape architect John T. Withers
who left much of the rocky terrain as he found it. Appointed by Mayor
H. Otto Wittpenn as the municipal landscaper, Withers was also responsible
for the Mary Benson Park on Newark Avenue and the Bayside Park in the Greenville section
of Jersey City. According to local historian J. Owen Grundy, "Withers
had made quite a reputation in Jersey City at the turn of the century
by giving illustrated lectures before various organizations showing how
attractive a city could be if the citizens and public officials cared"
(Grundy).

The
larger-than-life stone statues of the buffalo and bear were the work of
sculptor Solon Hannibal Borglum (1868-1922). As an artist he was influence
by the many years he spent on the Western plains of Utah and later Nebraska, where
his father owned a ranch. It allowed him to foster an appreciation for
the peoples and animals of the land. He visited the Sioux, who revere
the buffalo, at their South Dakota reservation; it resulted in his work
Sioux Indian Buffalo Dance (1899).

Art
commentator Meredith Bzdak remarks that "Borglum's Buffalo and
Bears are unusual works for their time. The animals are depicted in
a naturalistic fashion, lying directly on the grass and therefore completely
within the space of the viewer; they are unencumbered by a base or pedestal.
These works . . . typify his spontaneous style. Forgoing strict anatomical
illustration, Borglum preferred to simply suggest an animal's form and
to infuse the work with a sense of movement" (Bzdak 57). Among his
other works are Lassoing Wild Horses (1898) and On the Border
of the White Man's Land (1899); they represent his theme of frontier
life recurrent in his work. Borglum's brother, Gutzon, is the noted sculptor
of Mount Rushmore and the statue of Abraham Lincoln in front of the Essex
County Court House in Newark.

An
iron fence that is anchored in concrete piers surrounds the urban park.
In the center is a circular gazebo or bandstand. On November 9, 1930, the Hudson City Soldiers and Sailors Welfare League, Inc.
placed a World War I memorial statue Dough Boy in the park. There
is also an American eagle atop a granite shaft that was placed there by
the Raymond Sipnick Post of the Jewish War Veterans.

According
to Grundy the naming of the new park came from the opinion of William
H. Richardson. He was a member of the city's Board of Shade Tree Commission
and "believed that all city parks should be named to honor distinguished
citizens" (Grundy). Two years prior to the founding of the park,
Dr. Leonard J. Gordon (1844-1905) had died, and city leaders agreed that
his legacy to the city merited the park naming. Mayor Mark M. Fagan said
at a memorial for Dr. Gordon, "No better man or more useful citizen
ever lived in this city" (Quoted in Grundy).

Bust of Dr. Leonard J. Gordon
at the Entrance of the Jersey City Free Public Library
Photo: A. Selvaggio, 2002

Dr.
Gordon, a New York native, served in the Union army during the Civil War.
After moving to Jersey City, he obtained his medical degree from Bellevue Medical Center in 1875 and
completed his internship at the Jersey City Charity Hospital that predated the MedicalCenter. After
practicing medicine for two years, he was appointed chemist for the Lorillard
Tobacco Company. His contributions to his adopted city were the placement
of the sculpture Soldiers and Sailors Memorial by Philip Martiny
in front of City
Hall and the advancement of the Free
Public Library of Jersey City. He championed the founding of a public
library for the city, coming up against the vote of a municipal referendum.
When the approval and appropriations for the library were finally granted,
Dr. Gordon became the president of its board of trustees and then the
library's director. In his honor, a memorial window and a bust of Dr.
Gordon at the entrance of the main library on Jersey Avenue were donated
by local residents in February 1907. Dr. Gordon's brick, Queen Anne-style
home by the architect William Milne Grisnell, built in 1888, was at 485
Jersey Avenue, not far from the library at 472 Jersey Avenue.